EU Deports 70% of its Illegal Immigrants

The EU, which has slammed Israel over staged infiltrator protests, is guilty of deporting 70% of its own infiltrators.

By Tova Dvorin

First Publish: 2/4/2014, 8:19 AM

Thousands of illegal infiltrators protest in Tel Aviv

Flash 90

The Immigration and Population Authority (IPA) will be releasing a report revealing the true relationship between the EU and infiltrators, according to one official.

Yonatan Yakovich, the IPA's director of public relations, revealed to Arutz Sheva that the facts in the upcoming report - which use Switzerland as an example -will evidently speak for themselves.

"We checked the data for the recognition of these countries towards asylum seekers and Eritrean and Sudanese. It turns out that in most cases are rejected. Seventy percent of them do not get the recognition as refugees," Yakovich stated.

He noted that by any parameters, the Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators cannot gain asylum under international law. "Some claim they are running away from a long military service," he noted. "Israel and Switzerland do not view army defectors as refugees."

"The infiltrators make several stops on their way to Israel," he continued. "Under Article 31 of the agreement [from the 1951] UN Convention, infiltrators can only be granted refugee status if they flee directly from their home country [to their final destination]."

According to Yakovich, cases of asylum-seekers gaining refugee status are actually few and far between.

"There were two such cases, [with the infiltrators] claiming they were persecuted by the regime, and that their lives were in danger," he explained. "We checked them thoroughly, compared their versions [of events] and they have received special status."

As for the future, "we see that the protest movement is not going well, not getting media exposure, and we are pleased that the government did not succumb to pressure."

Residents of southern Tel Aviv, as well as those of other cities like Eilat, say they have been suffering from endless harassment and violence perpetrated by the many illegal Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators - now over 60,000 - who enter Israel to find employment and come to live in their working-class neighborhoods. Residents say they are terrified of leaving their homes and have begged the government to take action. Crime has skyrocketed in those areas since 2011.

Under legislation passed on December 10, illegal immigrants entering Israel can be held at special facilities for up to a year while their refugee claims are investigated. It was the latest in a series of measures aimed at cracking down on the numbers of migrants entering the country illegally, which Israel says poses both a security and demographic threat.

The new law amends earlier legislation which allowed for immigrants to be held for up to three years without trial that was overturned by the Supreme Court in September.

However, the move was not enough for leftist organizations, who staged protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv claiming Israel was guilty of "human rights violations," protests that gained headline coverage worldwide. Israel became the subject of scrutiny after the international media coverage; later, it was revealed that leftist organizations, the UN, and the EU have been funding the "spontaneous" protests.